Anita Shreve

Light on Snow

Light on Snow What makes a family That s what twelve year old Nicky Dillon wonders after she and her widowed father discover a wailing abandoned baby in the snow filled woods near their New Hampshire home Through t

Title: Light on Snow

Author: Anita Shreve

ISBN: 9780316781480

Page: 484

Format: Hardcover

What makes a family That s what twelve year old Nicky Dillon wonders after she and her widowed father discover a wailing abandoned baby in the snow filled woods near their New Hampshire home Through the days that follow, the Dillons and an unexpected visitor who soon turns up at their door a young woman evidently haunted by her own terrible choices face a thicket of deciWhat makes a family That s what twelve year old Nicky Dillon wonders after she and her widowed father discover a wailing abandoned baby in the snow filled woods near their New Hampshire home Through the days that follow, the Dillons and an unexpected visitor who soon turns up at their door a young woman evidently haunted by her own terrible choices face a thicket of decisions, each seeming to carry equal possibilities of heartbreak and redemption Writing with all the emotional resonance that has drawn millions of readers around the world to her fiction, Anita Shreve unfolds in Light on Snow a tender and surprising novel about love and its consequences.

About The Author

Anita Shreve grew up in Dedham, Massachusetts just outside Boston , the eldest of three daughters Early literary influences include having read Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton when she was a junior in high school a short novel she still claims as one of her favorites and everything Eugene O Neill ever wrote while she was a senior to which she attributes a somewhat dark streak in her own work After graduating from Tufts University, she taught high school for a number of years in and around Boston In the middle of her last year, she quit something that, as a parent, she finds appalling now to start writing I had this panicky sensation that it was now or never Joking that she could wallpaper her bathroom with rejections from magazines for her short stories I really could have, she says , she published her early work in literary journals One of these stories, Past the Island, Drifting, won an O Henry prize Despite this accolade, she quickly learned that one couldn t make a living writing short fiction Switching to journalism, Shreve traveled to Nairobi, Kenya, where she lived for three years, working as a journalist for an African magazine One of her novels, The Last Time They Met, contains bits and pieces from her time in Africa.Returning to the United States, Shreve was a writer and editor for a number of magazines in New York Later, when she began her family, she turned to freelancing, publishing in the New York Times Magazine, New York magazine and dozens of others In 1989, she published her first novel, Eden Close Since then she has written 12 other novels, among them The Weight of Water, The Pilot s Wife, The Last Time They Met, A Wedding in December, and Body Surfing.In 1998, Shreve received the PEN L L Winship Award and the New England Book Award for fiction In 1999, she received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey, and The Pilot s Wife became the 25th selection of Oprah s Book Club and an international bestseller In April 2002, CBS aired the film version of The Pilot s Wife, starring Christine Lahti, and in fall 2002, The Weight of Water, starring Elizabeth Hurley and Sean Penn, was released in movie theaters Still in love with the novel form, Shreve writes only in that genre The best analogy I can give to describe writing for me is daydreaming, she says A certain amount of craft is brought to bear, but the experience feels very dreamlike Shreve is married to a man she met when she was 13 She has two children and three stepchildren, and in the last eight years has made tuition payments to seven colleges and universities.

598 Comment

I found the book in a quaint, but minuscule secondhand bookshop in the middle of nowhere. Since I've read one of the author's books before, I decided to read this one as well. It was such a delight to find in the first place there. It was one of the very few better choices. And I liked the reading experience.A twelve-year-old girl, Nicky, and her widowed dad, Robert, finds a baby in the snow. The Dillon's secluded life out in the New Hampshire's woods are suddenly not so simple anymore. They sav [...]

Finishing either the 4th or 5th Anita Shreve book and I'm just wrecked, as usual. It happens the same way every time so far. I begin reading, the story is set on the East Coast, Vermont, New Hampshire, by the ocean, and I think to myself,hmm, I don't think I can relate to this. The character seems cold, or strange, alien.Then a few page turns and I'm enraptured. Shreve has a talent that I wish I had, the talent of describing something that is indescribable to most people. Daily moments or feelin [...]

I am glad I didn't base whether to read this book on the reviews here because I think a lot of people didn't "get it," and maybe that's Shreve's failing, but I've observed that, by and large, people don't really understand grief until they experience it first hand, unfortunately. I know that I did not. So I think that people who have experienced the kind of grief that keeps you from getting out of bed will really appreciate this book, and those who have had blissfully uneventful lives will miss [...]

I read this book to be a good book club member. The target audience appeared to be young adult women, so this book was not really my thing. That being said, it took only about four hours to read, which was a plus (and is why the book is worthy of two stars). Many of the characters seemed like caricatures, and many of their actions were not very believable. The narrator was supposedly 30 at the time the narration was occurring, but sounds like she is 12. Young adult women who like coming of age s [...]

I’ve never read Anita Shreve before, but I picked up this book at the Tokyo airport… it was a name I recognized and there were not a lot of English books to chose from. It turned out be a good choice. I enjoyed the book because the story and the characters seemed real. It was if this situation of finding a baby in the snow and plot that follows, could happen to anyone. I found that I was putting myself in the characters’ shoes asking what I would do in the same situation. I don’t want to [...]

This book was a quick read, which I was in dire need of. The plot was interesting enough to keep my attention, although there were points where the author merely mentioned what would come of a certain seemingly insignificant event (i.e. When Nicky and her dad help shovel out the woman's car at the end of the novel and the author merely states: "In the spring, my father will stop at the cottage with the wash outside and find a kind of love there with a woman and her there sons that in years to co [...]

Is that it? Really? I've read better pieces of news about the same subject and that provoked in me deeper emotions than this book.Talk about disappointment. Plus, the writing was bland and so were the characters.Nicky was okay. She was really mature and her thoughts were surprisingly insightful for her age.However, her father was a selfish, cowardly man, too lost in his own grief to support a young daughter going through the same process. And Charlotte? Her story could have been so much more tha [...]

In general, I don’t abide well with clutter. It’s not that I’m an OCD clean freak; life’s too short to fret over a few dust bunnies. I simply function better in a reasonably neat and structured environment. However, when it comes to my TBR list, it’s about as pell-mell as one can get. My reading tastes are hither-and-yon, and numerical TBR sequencing is simply a formality. So I think of my TBR as a literary menagerie for leisure enjoyment; No pressures. No deadlines. Reading whatever, [...]

Light on Snow reminded me why I like Anita Shreve’s writing. The story of Nicky and Robert Dillon, her father, who find a new born baby in the snow while walking in the woods is simply told and caught me from the beginning. It is an easy read yet manages to uncover layers of how people make the decisions they do, as well as how they handle. Nicky and her father have suffered tragedy in their lives with the death of his wife and baby Clara. Nicky grieves for her mother and baby Clara, but in a [...]

If you enjoy a quick delve into the nature of grief, love, and family, but don't want to be overwhelmed with vicarious pain, then this is a good pick for you.The story is told in the first person by a woman looking back after many years on herself as an adolescent, but she uses the present tense for the current events of the story, and the past tense for longer-ago flashback events. I thought this made it feel less like a memoir and gave it more urgency. The author underlines the emotional eleme [...]

I enjoyed this book. While I have been disappointed with the latest installments of Shreve's books, this one came through. It's a character driven book, told by Nicky, the daughter of Robert Dillon. These are two people who have experienced much pain and tragedy in their lives. Nicky has lost her mother and her baby sister earlier in an accident. Her dad is all she has left. With the discovery in the woods of an abandoned baby, their lives unravel revealing layers that may never have been uncove [...]

I could not put this book down. I was totally engrossed in the storyline, plot and characters. This was a compelling, touching yet easy read. It tugged at my hearstrings as I shared the pain, grief, loss and loneliness that jumped out at me. I am not giving away much here other than it is told from a 12 year old's perspective as she reflects back on a time in her life when she is an adult. As she is telling the story it shifts backwards and forwards which helped me gain a better understanding of [...]

I'm pretty amazed at how many books I've neglected on my TBR. I have no idea when I will read the last book that I pinned in 2015 (I really hope before February!!).Things I loved about this book, Light on Snow:1. THE COVER2. SNOW ON THE COVER3. I LOOOOOOVEEEE SNOW4. How it was written - #AMAZING5. NICKYOKAY, first things first - whoever left an INFANT in the god damn snow is a terrible person. And okay, that's what I first thought when I read the synopsis. BUT SERIOUSLY WHO THE HELL WOULD DO THA [...]

3.5 stars. This story is told from the perspective of Nicky Dillon, who is reflecting on the events that took place the December she was twelve years old. When Nicky was ten, her mother and baby sister Clara were killed in a car crash. Now two years later, she and her dad, Rob, are living in an isolated and remote New Hampshire community. One night they are out snowshoeing when they come across a newborn baby left in the snow. As the story unfolds, Shreve brings to us readers realistic character [...]

Another Shreve success! I loved this audio book and could hardly quit listening when I got out of my car. I felt like I was in New Hampshire myself as I listened to the descriptive words used throughout the book.

This was really a lovely book. The premise is sad: a 12 year old girl and her father who have moved to an isolated house in New Hampshire after the mother and baby sister die in a car crash in New York are walking through the woods between their house and a small nearby motel and find (and save) a just-born baby that has been left in a sleeping bag to die on a winter night. But the story that follows is a beautiful, well-written compelling story of healing, hope, and forgiveness.One passage real [...]

This book is about a young girl and her dad. They recently lost their mom/wife and sister/daughter in a car accident in new york. They move away to a small town. One day they are snow shoeing and they hear a wail, they think it's just a cat or some other animal. But it ends up being a baby. They grb the baby and go to the hospital to save it. They get questioned by dectives and akll that good stuff. Then a lady comes to their dorr asking to look at some furniture to buy but it ends upo being the [...]

This was a quick read, but a charming little story. Don't expect a blockbuster plot, don't expect something momentous. Just take it for what it is and you won't be disappointed. It's more of a snapshot of the life of a father and daughter who live in an isolated cabin during a snowstorm and the finding of a baby in the snow which adds some drama and excitement into their lives - something that it sounds like the daughter really needs.Shreve did an EXCELLENT portrayal of a teenage daughter here. [...]

This is a book I stumbled across in the library. It is not a new book, the publication date is 2004. It is a haunting story about life, death, and coming of age. Nicky Dillon and her father have experienced great loss after an accident kills mother and younger daughter. The father tries to cope by moving to an isolated part of New Hampshire. One day close to Christmas, Nicky and her father are taking a snowshoe walk in the winter snow, and respond to a baby cry. They are stunned to find a newbor [...]

Light on Snow is good, if a little, wellghtThis is the second book I've read by Anita Shreve (the first being Eden Close) and I did enjoy both. I read this book in two sittings--it's easy and quick to read. The premise was very good and I thought the plot would be very interesting. It did hold my interest, as I wanted to see how the story finally resolved itself. But it ended up not to be as interesting as I anticipated. The bulk of the text was extremely redundant. Over and over again it snows, [...]

I used to love to read this author, and then got soured by her lastwellx books. I found this one in a used book store and decided to give it a try. I was rather pleasantly surprised. A father and his young daughter live in upstate New Hampshire---its the dead of winter, and they live in a remote location, so they take their snowshoes out and go on walks every evening. As they walk in the woods one night, they hear a strange noise. They think that it might be a wounded animal, and go to investiga [...]

All ratings systems are relative. I really liked this book but I couldn't give it four stars because other four star books were much better. This is "a modest work" according to a review on the back of the book. There are very few characters, a single plot line with references to something that took place in the past and essentially one setting. It hardly qualifies as a novel. As I read it in two sittings it seems like an extended short story. I'm not worried about the definition, I just want to [...]

What happens when a 12 year old girl and her father find a crying baby in the snow filled woods next to their home? Well, you will have to read Light on Snow to find out. I think you will be glad you did because it is another well written story by Anita Shreve that grabs hold of you and keeps you entertained and turning pages. I have read all of Anita Shreve's books, although I haven't shelved them all on yet. They have all been very good and several of them are exceptional. If you haven't expe [...]

I enjoyed this book which I've meant to read for quite some time. Listened to this story on my phone and got caught up right away in the characters and events. It's a story about dealing with family loss, and the stressful relationship and coping that follows, but also with hope for the future. The book is written in the present tense but is retold by Nicky, who is now 18. She tells her story of when she was 12 and had recently lost both her mother and baby sister in a car accident. Her widowed [...]

I love everything about this book. I think I probably read it before (I found it on my own bookshelf, when I was putting away another to-read title by Anita Shreve), but I must have inhaled it very quickly, because I couldn't remember a thing about it. Except that every new scene seemed -- intriguingly -- familiar. I read it (again?) very quickly -- because the characters are so compelling. I wanted to know them, I wanted in on their lives. I love how Shreve writes in the present tense. But then [...]